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Trees and farm boundaries: farm forestry, land tenure and reform in Kenya

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

Peter A. Dewees
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Extract

Tree cultivation and management are a common form of land use in high-potential areas of Kenya. While some of these practices are related to economic considerations, such as markets and prices for specific tree products, others were derived from or developed in parallel with customary practices. This article traces the origins of contemporary demarcation practices in Kikuyu areas of Kenya, involving the planting of trees in hedges and windrows, from their customary antecedents. Customary law prescribed clear mechanisms for demarcating land to which rights of use had been acquired. These mechanisms, characterised principally by the planting of particular trees on the boundaries of land holdings, were given limited recognition by the colonial administration, and were subsequently incorporated (without any clear awareness of their customary role) in the contemporary body of land law which emerged as a result of the land reforms of the early 1960s. Land reforms tended to obscure customary distinctions between rights of control to trees and rights of use and access, by equating rights of control with rights of ownership. The result has been that rights of use and access, which had been guaranteed to the landless under customary law, were, for the most part, eliminated.

Résumé

La culture et l'exploitation des arbres sont des formes courantes d'usage de la terre dans les endroits du Kenya qui ont un fort potentiel. Tandis que certaines de ces pratiques sont liées à des considérations économiques, tel que les marchés et les prix pour des produits arboricoles spécifiques, d'autres ont été dérivés de ou développés en parallèle avec des pratiqués coutumieres. Cet article fait remonter les origines des pratiques de démarcations contemporaines dans les endroits Kikuyu du Kenya, entrainant la plantation d'arbres dans des haies, à leurs antécédents coutumiers. La loi coutumière a present des mécanismes clairs pout démarquer la terre pour laquelle les droits d'usage avaient ete acquis.

Ces mecanismes, caractérisés principalement par la plantation de certains arbres sur les limites des exploitations, ont été reconnus avec restriction par l'administration coloniale et ont été par la suite incorporés (sans une conscience bien claire de leur rôle coutumier) dans le corps des lois agraires contemporaines qui a emergé à la suite des réformes agraires du début des années 60. Les reformes agraires avaient tendance a obscurcir les distinctions coutumieres entre les droits de contrôle sur les arbres et les droits d'usage et d'accés, en égalant les droits de contrôle avec les droits de propriété. Le résultat en a été que les droits d'usage et d'accés, qui avaient été garanti à ceux sans terres sous la loi coutumiére, ont ete, pour la plupart, éliminés.

Type
Making a living in rural Kenya
Information
Africa , Volume 65 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 217 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1995

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